Their glorious institutions, their unequalled freedom, were, of course, not left unsung.

I took some pains to ascertain what they meant by their glorious institutions, and it is with no affectation of ignorance that I profess I never could comprehend the meaning of the phrase, which is, however, on the lip of every American, when he talks of his country.  I asked if by their institutions they meant their hospitals and penitentiaries.  “Oh no! we mean the glorious institutions which are coeval with the revolution.”  “Is it,” I asked, “your institution of marriage, which you have made purely a civil and not a religious rite, to be performed by a justice of peace, instead of a clergyman?”

“Oh no! we speak of our divine political institutions.”  Yet still I was in the dark, nor can I guess what they mean, unless they call incessant electioneering, without pause or interval for a single day, for a single hour, of their whole existence, “a glorious institution.”

Their unequalled freedom, I think, I understand better.  Their code of common law is built upon ours; and the difference between us is this, in England the laws are acted upon, in America they are not.

I do not speak of the police of the Atlantic cities; I believe it is well arranged:  in New York it is celebrated for being so; but out of the range of their influence, the contempt of law is greater than I can venture to state, with any hope of being believed.  Trespass, assault, robbery, nay, even murder, are often committed without the slightest attempt at legal interference.

During the summer that we passed most delightfully in Maryland, our rambles were often restrained in various directions by the advice of our kind friends, who knew the manners and morals of the country.  When we asked the cause, we were told, “There is a public-house on that road, and it will not be safe to pass it,”

The line of the Chesapeak and Ohio canal passed within a few miles of Mrs. S—­’s residence.  It twice happened during our stay with her, that dead bodies were found partially concealed near it.  The circumstance was related as a sort of half hour’s wonder; and when I asked particulars of those who, on one occasion, brought the tale, the reply was, “Oh, he was murdered I expect; or maybe he died of the canal fever; but they say he had marks of being throttled.”  No inquest was summoned; and certainly no more sensation was produced by the occurrence than if a sheep had been found in the same predicament.

The abundance of food and the scarcity of hanging were also favourite topics, as proving their superiority to England.  They are both excellent things, but I do not admit the inference.  A wide and most fertile territory, as yet but thinly inhabited, may easily be made to yield abundant food for its population:  and where a desperate villain knows, that when he has made his town or his village “too hot to hold him,” he has nothing to do but to travel a few miles west, and be sure of finding plenty of beef and whiskey, with no danger that the law shall follow him, it is not extraordinary that executions should be rare.